Interview with Tomasito, singer and flamenco bailaor
“I’ve always gotten
involved with cante”
Silvia Calado. Madrid, June 2009
Translation: Joseph Kopec
The phrase has stories behind it.
One of those reminiscent of ‘Los managers’ by
Pata Negra… but out in Benalup. But Tomasito
prefers to leave it off the record, and give it another
meaning; that of the expression by buddies who bump into
one another in any street in Jerez and ask each other “kid,
friend, how are things? And what about my stuff?”.
He tells it while fluttering around the office of Nuevos
Medios, recommending on the phone Morante de la Puebla-style
passes with a cape, finishing por bulerías in full
flight for the photographer and talking about the album
by bits and pieces. About his friend Angus Young at Myspace,
about Tino di Geraldo in command, about the live recording
at the studio, about heavy, about fandangos, about Lavapiés,
about Senegal.
Kid, Tomasito… and what about your
album? He answers the question with “let’s see
where it is”. He leaps ipso facto to the other side
of the office and then with the disc in front of him, which
is not so easy to open because according to him, in this
company they use “hydrocyanic glue””,
he defines it as “flamenco rock; more flamenco and
more rock, impossible”. And he immediately shares
the joy of having it in his hands after seven years since
his previous album. Of course, he hasn’t been sitting
around doing nothing: “I’ve gone around the
world quite a few times, with ‘Calle 54’, with
Jorge Pardo, with some different people”. But he needed
inspiration, material, reasons. “I didn’t have
any texts or stuff to pull out. And you know what we flamencos
are like, we’re not like other kinds of people; we
might have more respect for the studio and we don’t
bring out albums for the sake of bringing them out”.
In his view, the conditions are “to be at ease, to
have texts, to find company”… and time. “You
can do it in a rush, but I prefer to work little by little.
Having time has encouraged me, has allowed me to compose
at home, to grab music from here and there”, he affirms.
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“What
we flamencos are like, we’re not like other kinds
of people; we might have more respect for the studio
and we don’t bring out albums for the sake of
bringing them out”
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And in this little over a lustrum, he has
become the father of three children, got his high school-equivalent
diploma, was accepted to university and has reached his
second year of Sociology. “I’ve given it up
now, it’s really hard… but with what I’ve
studied, I have some good chats with my father-in-law”.
None of this has hampered his musical life; “just
the opposite, all that stuff has helped me”. So having
time and inspiration on his side, he just needed to put
together a team. And on this occasion, it’s been a
trio, having Mario Pacheco’s support on the record
company side and that of Tino
di Geraldo on the production side. “This is really
cool, both of them have let me do whatever I wanted”,
Tomasito affirms. To which he adds that “when there’s
good karma it’s like a soccer team; you work differently”.
That’s why he’s been able to develop a new album
instead of a compilation, which was originally what he had
foreseen. But the idea keeps going around in his head because
unfortunately, his four other albums are currently off the
catalogue. “I don’t know what has to be done.
I really don’t know, I wish they’d bring them
out now. This album is the fifth. And none of them is for
sale”, the artist explains regretfully. Here, one
should really ask “and what about my stuff?”,
as he himself says jokingly. He feels impotent in this situation:
“I can’t do anything. I’m the most fitting
one to say so and the least. Imagine how much music is lost”.
So there’s no place for reproaches if “sometimes
I say so in the concerts, that my albums are off the catalogue,
for them to seek them on the Internet”.
But now that the fifth one is out on the
market, it’s no time for lamenting. Tomasito relates
what the creation and recording process was like of ‘Y
de lo mío, ¿qué?’: “Well,
it was hard. There were more songs at first but in two months
I got down to a fresh selection of the texts I had tucked
away in a folder, among them, the fandango by Coppini…
That’s how the stuff started to come to me”.
The projects he has taken part in over the years have also
had a lot to do with it, especially the group G-5 which
he formed together with Kiko Veneno, Muchachito Bombo Infierno
and Los Delinqüentes, and which materialized into a
good handful of live shows as well as the album ‘Tucaratupapi’.
“I invited Uncle Kiko
Veneno over to have some stew - Tomasito recalls - and
he dedicated the song ‘La vida está mu mala’
to me. And then he proposed ‘Consejos de mi pare’
to me. What does your father tell you?, he asked me. And
I told him always keep your money here, always keep your
guitar under your bed, and so on and so forth. He gave me
the lyrics there at home and we completed them on tour with
G-5. But even my friend the plumber put something in the
refrain for me! The part about trust me, ’cause I
trust you…”. Working side by side with one of
the fathers of new flamenco has been the most enriching
thing for Tomasito. In his opinion, “Kiko is, besides
fantastic in his things, a real kid, really playful and
cool”. The admiration is mutual: “The other
day he dedicated a song to me on a television program, there
with his guitar”.
And the time came to press the ‘record’
button. “We recorded live, in little time, a week
or two, not much”, the cantaor and bailaor remarks.
But that was because he stayed in Madrid: “We recorded
at Cinearte because if you go to Jerez, you know, a drunken
spree, you never finish, all your cousins get involved,
your liver, the psychologist… Ha ha ha. So
we went to the studio for two or three days with Jorge,
Ignacio, Tino… and we got down to doing all the songs”.
The decision to record live at the studio was made after
Tino attended a concert by Tomasito at La Casa Encendida
in Madrid: “The idea was for all of us to go to the
studio and make it rawer, faster, three takes each. And
that, after two or three days playing to warm up. You get
a feel for the stuff there, that’s how I work at ease,
my friend. The strength of the live performance is reflected
here”. That is why in the group “there aren’t
any renowned guests, but rather musicians who go on tour
with me”. Then other songs were recorded afterwards
at Sonoland, like ‘Rumba del revés’ “where
I invited Muchachito, who, by the way, didn’t charge
for it, what a nice guy. Hey, everybody for the time being
says: And what about my stuff?!”
Another outstanding collaborator on the
album is Germán Coppini, who had already composed
‘Amor garantizado’ for him on the album ‘Castaña’.
“I had the text at home, I got inspired there, the
stuff seemed really flamenco to me and I saw that those
lyrics went well with sierra fandangos. Then there’s
a change to heavy, and then the text turns around and goes
into rhythm and blues; this song has quite a few changes…”,
he explains in detail. Next, Tino asked him for a taranta.
That’s how ‘Lola y Candela’ arose, whose
lyrics “were sent to me via SMS by David de la Chica,
from Palocortao; a message every ten minutes”.
With those fandangos and these tarantas,
what Tomasito does in passing is to extend his cantaor repertoire.
“ ‘Seguiriya del 2000’ and ‘Soleá
punky’ are there. I’ve always gotten involved
with cante, from ‘Castaña’ on. I got
into alegrías here too, in ‘El olvido’…
Well, a complete cantaor now!”. The number one fan
of his way of performing on this album is the company’s
director: “Mario tells me that I’m really good,
that I sing really well, I mean, that I’m the best
part of the album, ha ha ha”. But he attributes it
to the sound. In his way of understanding, “everything
sounds really good, this album has really good sound. It’s
mixed and mastered kick-ass by Guillermo Quero; he’s
really sure about it”. And in passing, he lets loose
a vindication: “We’re always talking about music,
but when something sounds good, you have to say so. And
in this case I’m not the one who says so, but rather
the people who buy it”.
In the conversation, of course, the name
pops up again of Tino di Geraldo, the producer of this and
other prior albums, but also the author of some of the songs
and a multi-instrumentalist. “What great work he’s
done”, Tomasito points out. And he explains why he’s
loyal to his producer: “If I look for another, I don’t
know, I don’t dare, he might not understand me. And
I wouldn’t produce an album by myself. I have to be
seen from the other side, it’s really hard to choose
all the songs”, he comments. The work process between
the two of them is fluent, back and forth: “I send
the songs to him, the guitar and the vocals, the rawest
thing in the world, sometimes I make up the metronome or
I sing him the guitars or the rhythms. It’s cool with
your mouth, you see”. But he admits that “this
is the album he’s worked least on, what he’s
done is to give orders, which is what a producer has to
do; over here, over there”.
That’s why decisions didn’t
have to be made, whether more flamenco, whether more rock.
“I was already doing most of the songs live”,
the artist adds. And that’s how the disc was made.
Worship of the stage is not gratuitous. Things being the
way they are and quoting Rosendo, “we don’t
make a living from the albums, we make a living from the
live shows”. That is where both the album’s
freshness and rock disposition come from, which takes shape
in details such as “the Californian guitar in ‘Quisiera’,
the acoustics stuff, there’s a blues in the alegrías
‘El olvido’…”. By the way, this
song which closes the disc “is a very special alegría
with the flamenco guitar of Tino di Geraldo, who is a great
flamenco guitarist. Neither Morao nor anybody else! You
flip out with that great half-kilo guitar he has”,
Tomasito jokes.
-How do flamenco guitar and electric
guitar get along?
-Oh, they coexist well, but they have
to respect one another. That’s why Tino is there,
indicating where each of them has to go. And then there’s
great work editing. He makes a three-thousand-piece puzzle
at present, for I’ve seen him. ‘Tum, pam, tac,
tuc’.
-And ‘Back in black’ with
Tomasito?
-Man. These record label people have
had the balls to stick in ‘Back in black’. I’m
a friend of Angus Young’s at Myspace! I sent him the
song and then he became a friend; I couldn’t believe
it. Cool, great. And our version has been rolling along
for at least eight years now.
-What flamenco is there in AC/DC?
-Damn, nothing but the singer’s
voice… He’s the Australian Camarón. Angus
Young is Paco’s Tomate, José’s Morao.
As the conversation moves along, what we
start to realize is that this album “has many things
from some time ago”. As Tomasito himself points out
when he turns the CD over, “on the back cover there’s
a photo by Daniel Muñoz which he took of me some
time ago for Flamenco-world.com; it looks like it’s
from a flamenco wedding there ripping of my shirt”.
And it’s true, it was at Espárrago
Rock 2003. He says he had always saved it, the same
as songs such as ‘El universo en mis manos’,
“which I used to listen to a lot with Karolo when
he would stop in Lavapiés, when he used to play in
a group from there. I find that song really cool, it has
some very surrealistic texts, everybody used to sing it
at the festival in Lavapiés, in the San Lorenzo Fair”.
And the thing is, as he ends up admitting, “I save
everything. Tino started to tremble when he saw me coming
with the folder. If it remains it’s because it’s
good”.
-Why do you think the mixture of flamenco
and rock sounds so natural here?
-I don’t know. I begin composing
and start singing fandangos and all of a sudden I’m
within two tones of rock’n’roll. Cool, then
this way. To me, every type of music is natural. I get along
well with Brazilians, with Africans… I’ve just
come back from Dakar now. And kick-ass, with a group I was
in with Juan Diego, Javier Colina, Ranqui… We made
up the show the day before. In truth, we made afroflamenco.
It’s cool to be culturized; we’ll surely do
things with them in the future.
For the time being, he has several pending
dates this summer with jazz player Wynton Marsalis, whose
band he will join as guest artist in Canada, Barcelona and
Vitoria’s Jazz Festival. At the same time, he is starting
to shape up the live tour of ‘Y de lo mío,
¿qué?’. “I’m going with
the group to the University of Burgos and to the 2009 Mont
de Marsan Flamenco Festival, where I give a closing concert,
a compás course and a street show with guitarist
Rafael Rodríguez and two clappers”, he explains.
A triple performance which he is already getting ready…
his way: “I’m going to tell the students not
to be stressed, to have happy faces in the bulerías.
In the soleá, well, you have to be a little more
serious. Ha ha ha. And then I’ll be in the street
for two days, but that’s going to be spontaneous;
I’ll think about it on the plane”. And the thing
is that the matter of spontaneity, of adapting, of improvising
is something inherent in Tomasito, just like his unique
personality. It is more than clear that he is not a usual
flamenco, but those who understand know that he is more
flamenco than many of those others: “You have to understand
that I don’t fit in everywhere with what I do, but
I make the effort to adapt. Who knows, I might be called
one year to Las Minas...”. But it’s hard to
imagine him sitting on a rush-bottomed chair while we see
him finishing off por bulerías in the air, just when
the photographer shoots. We might already have the back
cover of the next album. Into the folder it goes!
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